On February 25th, four total strangers – Alex Gamble, Usman Akeju, Ciji Thornton, and Will LaFerriere – went on the run in a contest connected to the new movie from Universal Pictures, Repo Men. Wired, Universal, and Lone Shark Games then enlisted the public to try to track them down. If the runners could avoid […]

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On February 25th, four total strangers – Alex Gamble, Usman Akeju, Ciji Thornton, and Will LaFerriere – went on the run in a contest connected to the new movie from Universal Pictures, Repo Men. Wired, Universal, and Lone Shark Games then enlisted the public to try to track them down. If the runners could avoid […]

Last week, Wired, Universal Pictures, and Lone Shark Games launched an alternate reality game combined with a manhunt. It’s connected to the upcoming March 19 release of the movie Repo Men. In the futuristic movie, characters who have received replacement organs from “the Union” fall behind on payments have to go on the run from […]

This summer, Wired writer Evan Ratliff wrote a story about how people erase their identities and start over. After it ran, he tried to disappear—spending 25 days on the lam until a few enterprising Wired readers tracked him down through some brilliant hacking and sleuthing. Now we’re going to try the experiment again. Evan, Wired, […]

On Thursday at 3pm EST, we’ll be having a live chat with Evan Ratliff about his time on the run. This is your chance to ask how he evaded you, what he learned, and why he didn’t just stay on the bus with the Hermit Thrushes. So, on Thursday come to this page: http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/12/chat-with-evan-ratliff/ If […]

Last Friday, Evan sent me what he called his playlist. I put it on the blog, there was some chatter on Twitter, and then we all moved on. (Or at least publicly we did; maybe there was intense discussion on secret IRC channels that I wasn’t invited to!) Well, it turns out that Evan’s whole […]

A reminder: to win, you have to find Evan, say the word “fluke” and take a photograph of him. If you can’t remember the word, or if you don’t have a camera on you, he can walk away. But if you do take the picture and say the word, he’ll respond with a second code […]

Here’s an exchange between Evan and Rich Reder, the founder of the Facebook group, Run Evan Run, devoted to keeping Evan hidden. Evan’s email is in response from a message that Rich (aka @pbemaddy) sent to all the members of his facebook group describing their new “confidential corner” feature. from Evan Ratliff to Rich Reder […]

I just received the following: “I do not know how to use Twitter, and I wanted to get the word out to everybody that Evan is in ATLANTA. I did not do anything illegal to get this information, just have connections at the airport. Connections…not illegal right? He was supposed to fly from SLC to […]

In Wired issue 17.09, Evan Ratliff wrote a story about how people disappear
in the digital age. Then he went on the run himself, with Wired readers
trying to track him down. His story in Wired issue 17.12, Gone, tells what
happened. This blog shows the history of the hunt.